Was Elizabeth really the virgin queen??

Question

i am insinuating nothing either way - I am interested to hear other's views. was Elizabeth I really a virgin her whole life?? did she have s*x and a subsequent miscarriage as is rumoured with Thomas Seymour?? Through all the years of adoration between herself and Leicester (Robert Dudley) and later Essex did she remain chaste and untouched or merely unmarried?? Did a woman who loved men and flirtation really manage to resist the temptation to go further?? I simply cannot decide!! what is your opinon on the virgin queen??

Answer 1

Elizabeth Tudor is my idol - sounds silly but it's true! :)

I don't think that she was 'the virgin queen'; it may be her namesake but for a woman who loved Dudley so very much - how could she not have?!

I think that she wanted a pure image due to the strong religious beliefs at the time, mirroring herself against the Virgin Mary.

Many people of the world would have considered her to be 'The Virgin Queen' because she did not marry, or possibly just because Elizabeth wanted to be seen as that.

I'm not sure but I'd love to find out.

Bring on the time machines!

Love your question - star! :)

Clare x

Answer 2

She probably was a virgin.  She was an incredibly shrewd woman who knew what her society required of a queen.  Certainly she could permit herself flirtations, but had she succumbed she may have been seen as the feeble creature women were often believe to be.  

Furthermore, pregnancy was not something to be seen in that period.  She would probably not have wished to risk becoming pregnant, for fear of the crimp, if you'll excuse the expression, that it might put in her style as monarch.

It is opinion that she was probably strong enough to put aside the carnal nature of the human animal to protect her position.

Answer 3

I don't think she did because if she had she would run the risk of getting pregnant without being married and she wouldn't want that.

and she would not have had a miscarriage because the government would never have let it get that far, she would either have gotten married or had an abortion if they found she was pregnant not wait for a miscarriage.

Answer 4

She did not have a secret passage to her bed chambers for tiddlywinks. And she did not fly into a rage when one or more of her suiters got married on the QT because she hated them. even to having them beheaded or put in the tower.Virgin that must be the joke of history.  

Answer 5

we can all only speculate but no one will ever know,

Answer 6

It's hard to say. There are some rumours that Elizabeth had an illgeimate child.

  Some people believe that this illegimate child was male and actually the real writter of the Shakspear plays, because apparently the man who claims to be Shakespear had never gone to school his whole life and was poor (I'm not sure if this is true or not).

  Robert Dudley had a wife. He nd Elizabeth grew up together, and she did like him alot, but then he got married and 'betrayed' Elizabeth. I know Eizabeth never got married (which everyone knows) but was she a virgin?

  That's kind of hard to say. I mean, Artemis makes a good point. Plus, back then, they waited until marriage. But maybe isn't a virgin. Who knows...?

Answer 7

I think she really is.

Answer 8

I don't think we will ever really know the answer to that.  There are a lot of possibilities.  I'm inclined to believe that she was a virgin until her death.  After all, she was surrounded by people almost every moment of the day, even when she slept she was not alone.  She was the most important and well known person in the entire country so it would have been very difficult to keep such things in her life private.

But apart from all that - I think it's quite possible that everything Elizabeth observed and endured during her childhood may have slightly warped her views on the subject of s*x.  

At the age of three her mother was executed on the orders of her father.  The reason? Adultery.

Her first stepmother - Jane Seymour died shortly after giving birth to Edward VI.

Her stepmother Catherine Howard (also her mother's cousin) was later executed by her father - the reason again was adultery.

At the age of fourteen she was caught up in a flirtation with Thomas Seymour that went well beyond the bounds of playful affection. The result? Thomas Seymour is later executed on the orders of his own brother.

Catherine Parr - Elizabeth's step mother and Seymour's wife then dies in childbirth.

After all of these occurrences - it's hardly a surprise that Elizabeth might equate s*x with death.  Every time she has been exposed to these ideas in her childhood the result has been untimely death.  Elizabeth was first and foremost a survivor - this is clear from her actions during the reign of Mary I.  She came very close to execution in those five years and yet she survived Mary's inquisition and her imprisonment in the Tower - all before she was even 25 years old.  If survival meant maintaining her virginity then I believe she would have made the sacrifice.  She spent much of her life refuting the claims that she was illegitimate and therefore not the true Queen & even the Pope proclaimed that any man who assassinated Elizabeth would be doing God's work and would be assured of a place in Heaven.  So when doing battle against such accusations and threats as these, I think she would not have wanted to risk any further scandal about herself.

She certainly promoted the image of herself as 'The Virgin Queen' and deliberately likened herself to the Virgin Mary.  She wanted to be adored and feared simultaneously.  She wanted to be seen as something untouchable with a distinct aura of the divine.  It was a common enough belief amongst European monarchs of that time, that the power they had was God given & therefore their actions were all God's will.

I believe she was probably very intimate with Robert Dudley and he was the great love of her life.  But he was a bit of a man w***e & his marriage to Lettice Knowles was almost unforgivable in the Queen's eyes.  Even so, after his death, she spent three whole days locked in her chamber & refused food & refused to speak to anyone.  

Elizabeth was an incredibly strong woman and even though she flirted outrageously with her courtiers I think she was quite capable of resisting temptation - especially as it carried so much danger and so many threats to her life and her status as Queen.

Answer 9

Yes, I think so.  Her life was so much environed by servants that if she had done anything like that, news of it would have leaked out.

Answer 10

I'm not sure.

She never married and in those days extra-marital s*x was (officialy) frowned upon.

Nobody can account for what goes on behind closed doors though.

Answer 11

No  think she had her oats  many times,,,   But as she never actually married was termed  virgin    

Answer 12

After watching 'The Tudors', I don't believe it for one minute....randy beggars those Tudors.

Answer 13

vieni a mangiare la pizza a napoli

Answer 14

She was a virgin as she was such a minger.

Answer 15

All I know is she was a very smart and very shrewd lady. If she had had children she would have had to marry, she would then have lost power being a woman in the renaissance.

According to the Tibetans she was an emanation of Avalokiteshvara (Chenrizig) the Buddha of compassion and protector of Tibet. Think about it. If she had had children we probably wouldn't have had Queen Victoria, it was under her rule that many Buddhist temples were were restored and protected. It is India that is now home to his Holiness the Dalai Lama. Okay a bit tenuous and I haven't remember all the facts that support the claim but one thing is sure the country and maybe the world would be quite different today without her 'chastity'.  

Answer 16

I read somewhere when I studied this period at uni that Elizabeth was either infertile or incomplete/deformed "down there" as a result of her father's syphilis. Having said that, the earliest surviving condom was found at Kenilworth Castle (where Robert Dudley lived) and has been dated to the mid-16th century, so it's probable that she wasn't a virgin. The image she cultivated as a sexless individual was for public show, people wouldn't have easily been able to question it as this would have been treason.

Elizabeth I is a fascinating character, but I doubt she lived up to that particular nickname.